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Comparing Afrikaans morpho-syntactic variation ina South African underdeveloped context ⋆

Mark de Vos

Department of English Language and Linguistics, Rhodes University, PO Box 94, 6140Grahamstown, South Africa

Abstract

This paper is a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of aparticular methodology foruncovering dialectal morpho-syntactic variation. It outlines the challenges facing linguistson a project to document morpho-syntactic variation in Afrikaans in the Cape Provinces ofSouth Africa as well as some novel data on the typology of expletives in Afrikaans. SouthAfrica’s linguistic situation is precarious, rapidly changing and driven by underdevelop-ment. This poses particular challenges to the organizationof a comparative dialectologicalsurvey at practical and methodological levels that are perhaps slightly different to the issuesfaced in European contexts where the methodology was developed. The preliminary resultshave uncovered previously unknown variation with respect to expletives.

Key words:Afrikaans dialects, Variation, methodology, expletives

1 Overview of the project

Afrikaans is a West-Germanic language spoken by about five million people inSouthern Africa. Although Afrikaans is spoken across SouthAfrica, in Namibia,Botswana and even in Zimbabwe, the proportion of speakers ishigher in SouthAfrica’s Western Cape and Northern Cape regions where more than 50% and morethan 70% of the respective populations speak this language as L1.1 Afrikaans istheoretically interesting because it is the only West-Germanic language to system-atically lack verbal agreement morphology of any kind, it includes a variety of con-structions which are not found in other West-Germanic languages and it evolvedrelatively recently (since 1652) in a context of intense language contact, thus pro-viding insights into creole formation, linguistic diffusion and the theoretical natureof language change.

In order to explore these issues further, a project was set upto study morpho-syntactic variation in the Afrikaans spoken in the Northern, Western and EasternCape provinces. Using methodologies that were originally developed and widelytested in European contexts, the question remains as to their applicability in the un-derdeveloped contexts of the rural Cape provinces. This paper explores some of theresults of the project to date, arguing that while the methoddoes return valid results,the roles of the interactants in the data-collection process has a crucial bearing onthe overall ‘instrument’. It will be argued that the methodologies cannot be treated

is to document the typology of morpho-syntactic variation in Afrikaans, specif-ically focussing on the Afrikaans spoken in the Cape Provinces. In doing so, itdevelops a network of language respondents who can hopefully constitute a use-ful community-based linguistic resource. The data will be made available, publiclyand online – a first for a project of this kind in South Africa. Apreliminary data-base with a partial set of data can be found athttp://www.meertens.knaw.

nl/sanpad enduser/; this database will be extended as more results becomeavailable during the course of 2010. This sets the scene for the possibility of theproject continuing well after funding has stopped. Once thedatabase infrastructureis developed, there is no reason why the database cannot be extended in subsequentprojects or even why the same broad architecture cannot be extended to other lan-guages. In this respect the project could help developing the infrastructure neededto support future research. Hopefully, the entire project will ultimately contribute ina small way towards retaking the cultural discourse space that has been colonizedby normative perceptions of Afrikaans and what it means to beas speaker of thelanguage.

This paper develops its argument in three broad sections. Section 2 qualitativelyevaluates the methodology, section 3 provides a quantitative assessment and Sec-tion 4 concludes the article with some implications about the ways in which lin-guists view their instruments.

2 A qualitative assessment of the methodology

The methodology is broadly similar to the semi-structured interview techniquedescribed by Cornips and Poletto (2005), Cornips and Jongenburger (2001) andCornips (2006). In particular, it is similar to the method used in Belgium during theSAND project (Barbiers et al. 2007) where fieldworkers used aquestionnaire/stimulus-sheet to elicit (i) indications of whether a particular linguistic variable was used ina particular speech community and (ii) a paraphrased utterance from a speaker ofthe local variety.

Interviews were conducted in a home or neutral venue by a L1 field interviewerassisted by another interviewer who occasionally asked questions, but otherwiseremained in the background. Each interview took about 45 minutes to completewith an additional 15 minutes of general discussion in the beginning. At the be-ginning interviews took substantially longer, but averaged around 45 minutes withpractice. In an attempt to relax the respondents and allow them to get used to the in-terview environment, interviews commenced by asking general questions about theparticipant’s background, personal details as well as for stories about the area (e.g.local ghost stories). After a while, the interviewer started using the questionnaire asa stimulus to elicit indirect grammaticality judgements (Cornips and Jongenburger2001). Here is an extract from a particular stimulus set relating to the distribution

of the past-participle prefixge- in verb clusters (i.e. the IPP effect and anti-IPPeffect).2

(1) a. EkI

weetknow

datthat

JanJan

diethe

huishouse

gebouPST-build

hethave.AUX

Ja 1 2 3 4 5

Nee Hoe sal jy dit se?

‘I know that Jan (has) built the house’b. Ek

Iweetknow

datthat

JanJan

diethe

huishouse

laatlet.caus

boubuid

hethave.AUX

Ja 1 2 3 4 5

Nee Hoe sal jy dit se?

‘I know that Jan (has) got the house built’c. Ek

Iweetknow

datthat

JanJan

diethe

huishouse

gelaatPST-let.caus

boubuild

hethave.AUX

Ja 1 2 3 4 5

Nee Hoe sal jy dit se?

‘I know that Jan (has) got the house built’d. Ek

Iweetknow

datthat

JanJan

diethe

huishouse

laatlet.caus

gebouPST-build

hethave.AUX

Ja 1 2 3 4 5

Nee Hoe sal jy dit se?

‘I know that Jan (has) got the house built’e. Ek

Iweetknow

datthat

JanJan

diethe

huishouse

gelaatPST-let.caus

gebouPST-build

hethave.AUX

Ja 1 2 3 4 5

Nee Hoe sal jy dit se?

‘I know that Jan (has) got the house built’

All West-Germanic languages which use a prefix (e.g. ‘ge-’) to indicate past tense(1a) have complementary distribution of the prefix with a left-adjacent modal oraspectual verb; in other words, thege-prefix is absent in these contexts (1b). Thisis known as the Infinitivum Pro Participio (henceforth IPP) puzzle. Thus examples(1a,b) illustrate the pattern which is also found in Dutch and similar languages.

What is particularly striking about Afrikaans is that for some colloquial varieties,the prefixge- makes an appearance, either on the aspectual/linking verb (1c) orsometimes on the lexical verb itself (1d). It has also been claimed that in some va-rieties of Afrikaans such as Orange River Afrikaans, thege-prefix is occasionallydoubled (1e) (Du Plessis, p.c.). Examples (1c) through (1e)are, as far as we know,unique to Afrikaans. From the perspective of the questionnaire, what is importantto take from these examples is simply that they test all possible combinations ofthe past tense marker. Respondents were asked to provide a series of judgements,in accordance with the procedure outlined by Cornips and Jongenburger (2001:57).They were asked: (i) whether the stimulus was used in the particular speech com-munity, (ii) what paraphrase the respondent him or herself would actually use, and(iii) follow up questions on how frequent it was, whether it was used by older oryounger speakers etc. were also sometimes asked. An extractfrom an interview isprovided below (A = Main interviewer, S = Respondent, M = Assistant interviewer;the numbers 12a, 12b etc refer to the stimulus number under discussion).

(2) [12a]A: Dan’s daar hierdie sinnetjie: Die kinders weet dat Jan diehuis gebouhetThen there is this sentence: the children know that Jan builtthe houseS: mmmA: Die kinders weet dat Jan die huis gebou hetThe children know that Jan built the houseS: Ja. Dis algemeen, jaYes. It’s common, yesA: AlgemeenCommonS: Algemeen ja.Common yes[12e]A: um...Wat van: ek weet dat Jan die huis verlede jaar laat gebou hetwhat about: I know that Jan got the house built last yearS: nee, ook nie. Dis, [dit word ok nie] so gese nie, jaNo, also not. It’s, it’s also not said, yesA: [laat bou]got builtA: Sal hulle, hoe sal mevrou se net?Will they, how will you say itS: Ek weet dat Jan verlede jaar die huis gebou hetI know that Jan built the house last yearA: goedgood[12f]A: Wat van: Ek weet dat Jan die huis gelaat gebou hetWhat about: I know that Jan got the house built

S: Nee, ook nie. Ek weet dat Jan die huis gebou hetNo, also not. I know that Jan built the houseA: gebou het... [hoor mevrou] nie partykeer voorbeelde in die area waarmense se ge-ge soos gelaat gebou of gelaat gewerkbuilt... don’t you sometimes here examples in this region where peoplesay ‘ge-ge’ like got built or got workedS: [ja, nie gelaat nie]yes, not ‘got’S: Ja, mens hoor dit nogals somsYes, one sometimes hears such thingsA: somssometimesS: bai... dis baie seldever... it’s very seldom

What these examples demonstrate is that the responses to thequestions were sel-dom binary and that there was continual need for the interviewers to ask for dis-ambiguation, ask follow-up questions, subtly challenge the respondent to providequalifying information etc. As such, the interviewers dynamically perform an eval-uative role. Related to this issue of dynamic interpretation is the use of the Likertscale. The use of numbers proved unwieldy as respondents didnot seem to ‘get’ thenumbers. They consistently preferred verbal cues such asbaie, min mense praat so,algemeen, baie seldeetc. However, the interviewers experienced problems in map-ping a verbal response such asalgemeento a numeric scale. The result was that theLikert scale was largely abandoned and the verbal responseswere included in thetranscriptions. It is important to note, however, that thischange in interview practicedoes not entail an endorsement of binary grammaticality judgements. It is merelyan acceptance that linguists wanting to use the data must be prepared to interpret itafter the fact in the light of these qualifying statements bythe respondents.

2.1 Piloting

The questionnaire was based on examples of variation from existing literature. At aworkshop, Dutch and South African academics contributed ideas on areas of knownvariation which could be included in the survey. Naturally,not all of these variableswere ultimately able to be represented in the questionnaire, which included ques-tions on EPP, IPP, Verb clusters, Verb Projection Raising and various types of dou-bling. There was also a broader range of stimulus styles. Forinstance, some stimuliincluded sentences with ‘gaps’ where a respondent had to insert a word and trans-lation tasks. In addition, many stimuli included multiple variables (e.g. embeddedverb-second combined withsaam‘together’). Written paraphrase and translationtasks were not included by design as it was felt that due to constraints on functionalliteracy that respondents may have had trouble with this kind of task.

The first version of the questionnaire was piloted at Paardekraal (EC) in mid 2007.Some questions were added and some discarded and/or rephrased. This processcontinued during fieldwork in the North-Eastern Cape. In particular, the ‘gap’-typestimuli were problematic as the respondents simply couldn’t parse the sentencewith a word missing. In addition, stimuli with multiple variables proved difficultinsofar as it was not always clear which stimulus the respondent was respondingto. This required additional questioning to disambiguate the answers. Researchersfrom Stellenbosch also undertook fieldwork in the Western Cape. These fieldworkexperiences were then brought to bear on the questionnaire at a subsequent work-shop where the questionnaire was slimmed down substantially and a number ofadditional questions added. The questionnaire was then made available on the website of the project so that other members of the research group could make com-ments on it.

2.2 Data handling

Interviews were recorded digitally in uncompressed (WAV, 44.1K) format usinga Marantz PMD660 solid-state recorder, a SanDisk Ultra II 4Gig CompactFlashrecording medium and an ElectroVoice RE90L omnidirectional lavalier micro-phone with phantom power. The sound files were annotated in PRAAT. Sepa-rate tiers were used to annotate the the interviewer, assistant interviewer, respon-dent, stimulus number, additional notes and an pragmatically informed judgmentof whether the respondent had agreed or disagreed with the stimulus question. Thedata were extracted to a searchable MS-ACCESS database. Theaudio data of therespondents’ responses was also extracted so that the precise response to any stim-ulus can be listened to and interpreted independently.

2.3 Participants

To date, most of the research has been done in the Cape Provinces, the only provinceswith a large Afrikaans majority. In the Western Cape, Afrikaans is spoken by morethan 50% of the population and by more than 70% in the NorthernCape. In theEastern Cape, Afrikaans is spoken by a majority in the Western municipalities,with Xhosa gradually becoming the majority language in the East (Statistics SouthAfrica 2007). Participants were selected according to the following criteria: (i) thatthey speak Afrikaans as L1 and use it predominantly at home (ii) that they be bornin the area and have not moved away from the area for more than seven years(iii) that they be older than 55 and preferably even older (iv) that they be preferablyfrom the working class or lower-middle class (v) that two menand two women fromeach datapoint be selected. The participants were drawn from the Northern andEastern Cape regions respectively. In addition to being geographically distanced,

the Northern Cape is known for its regional variation (including NamakwalandAfrikaans (Links 1989) and Orange River varieties (Rademeyer 1938, Du Plessis1984, Van Rensburg 1984; 1989a, Verhoef 1988, Henning 1983,Roux 1988, DuPlessis 1985, Van Rensburg 1989b; 1990, Webb 1993)) while the Eastern Cape issupposedly the region from which standard Afrikaans originated.

To provide an idea of the respondents, here are some details from those that arecurrently in the database. These are the same respondents whose data are cited laterin this paper.

(3) Northern Cape:a. 4 women and 5 menb. Average age is: 67c. Locations are: Garies, Springbok, Matjieskloof, Lekkersing, Khubus and

Pellad. All speak Afrikaans as L1. 4 of them also speak Nama and 2 English.e. 1 spent 4 years outside the region (in PE) studyingf. Average education is: 8.7 years of education; 2 have qualifications in

Lower and Higher primary 1 & 2 respectively.g. Their names are: Johanna, Kiewiet, Grietjie, Anna, Willem, Janey,

Alfred, Josephine and Jacobus.

(4) Eastern Cape:a. 8 women and 6 menb. Average age is: 64c. Locations are: Somerset East, Cradock, Graaff Reinet andGrahamstown,d. All speak Afrikaans as L1 but 7 also speak some Englishe. Average education is 9.6 years. 8 have further education such as Lower

primary 1&2 and police training collegef. Their names are: Francina, Jan, Mita, Kornelius, Queenie, Rachel,

Reuben, Freddie, Catherine, Reinet, Francis, Raymond, Sylvia andWalter.

2.4 Participant selection and the observer’s paradox

One means of ameliorating the observer’s paradox is to gain entry into a linguisticnetwork. Since many networks include patterns of kinship, alleigance and oblig-ation, having an insider vouch for one is an excellent technique for gaining entryinto a particular network. This provides the fieldworker with an intermediate sta-tus between insider and outsider. For this reason, we used the ‘friend-of-a-friend’technique (Milroy 1987; 1980) as much as possible where according to Milroy: “itwas possible to equip myself with a status which was neither that of insider, northat of outsider, but something of both – a friend of a friend,or more technically, a

second order network contact”(Milroy 1980:44). On arrivalin a data location, thefieldworker would opportunistically ask people s/he met if they knew somebodys/he could talk to. For instance, in Kakamas (NC), we asked people working at alocal supermarket if they knew a pastor in the area. It just sohappened that a pastorwas just leaving the shop at that moment. In our rush to meet him before he gotinto his car, the fieldworker ran headlong into a glass door. Since the fieldworkerhad been embarrassed in an effort to speak to him, this created an immediate senseof closeness between the pastor and the fieldworker and he wasquite happy toprovide additional contacts from the community who we couldtalk to. Further-more, in approaching these contacts, we were able to use the name of the pastor asa kind of network capital with which to gain access. In another case, in Cradock(EC), we approached an office worker at the place we were staying. On hearing wewere researching Afrikaans dialects, she mentioned she wasdoing an ATKV writ-ing course. Since one of the original applicants for the research project was Prof.Du Plessis, who was the head of the ATKV writing school, this provided a sharedacquaintance which facilitated communication in the network. In some cases, thisinitial contact personally introduced us to additional respondents. In other cases,we simply introduced ourselves as along the lines of: “We have just talked to X ands/he thought you would be able to help us”. In addition, we asked every respondentif they knew somebody else we could talk to, or somebody in thenext town wecould contact.

An example of the effectiveness of this technique occured inKeimoes (NC) wherewe were conducting an interview with the respondent named Sally. During the in-terview a friend, Sophia, arrived and we were able to start aninterview with her.During the interview, tea was served and interview was terminated. However, therecorder continued to run and there was no sign that the respondent was uncom-fortable with it. After a fairly lengthy time, the interviewwas continued. A similarsituation occured in Riemvasmaak (NC) where the interview included a cigarettebreak and a neighbour arriving on the scene. However, in neither case was there anoticeable shift of register. These experiences are quite comparable with the expe-riences of Milroy (Milroy 1980) in Belfast where the friend-of-a-friend techniqueenabled her to record informal discussions in the vernacular.

On some occasions, the respondent who we had been referred towas not at home.On one particular occasion in Somerset East (and a similar experience occurred inDe Aar), a neighbour came out to see who was knocking and we started talking. In-terestingly, the fact that we already had an appointment with an (absent) neighbourseemed to serve as an endorsement similar to Milroy’s friend-of-a-friend status andwe were invited inside to conduct an interview and obtain further references.

A valid critique of this method is that it did not seem to assist us in accessing com-munities of ‘marginals’. By ‘marginals’, I mean those whosestructural position liesbeyond the established class structure, who tend to live in informal and semi-formalsettlements in deep poverty (Milroy 1980:citing Lloyd (1979)). Farm workers and

seasonally employed agricultural workers fall into this category as do certain inhab-itants on the outskirts of rural Northern Cape towns. There were occasions whenwe entered these settlements (e.g. in Augrabies, Sutherland and Carnarvon) andattempted to engage with people. While people were often willing to sit for an in-terview and/or would refer us to respondents, the interviews themselves were stiltedaffairs with some respondents providing anomalous answersand/or simply beingled by the interviewer and occasionally, the interviewers felt a sense of danger. Insuch cases the interviewer tended to cut short the interviews and leave. It seemsthat these communities are beyond the range of the methodology described here.

2.5 Some practical problems

In addition to the philosophical issue of the independence of the ‘instrument’ andthe pragmatic inferences required in using the Likert scale, a number of problemswere encountered, some more serious than others.

At a purely practical level, the distances proved to be intimidating across the re-search area. For instance over 16 300 km have been traveled todate, taking a tollon time and resources and placing constraints on how much data can be collectedduring a single field trip. There are also various sociological factors that have beeninteresting to negotiate.

At some data points, it was very difficult to make contact witholder people. Forinstance, in the far northern Cape, when we asked to be referred to grootmense‘great-people’ (i.e. elders), some of the people we met wereapparently youngerthan 60. This reflects the harshness of life in this area. However, if we tried hardenough we were invariably able to find some older people.

For instance, alcohol abuse is very common in the entire northern Cape with severalrespondents made reference to it during interviews); Foetal Alcohol Syndrome isthe highest in the world; 10% severe incidence among children under 12 monthsand 50% partially affected in the same group (http://www.scienceinafrica.

co.za/2006/march/fas.htm (Accessed 14 September 2008)).) Nevertheless, itshould be noted that we did not experience these types of problems consistentlyas the social networks we utilized differed from place to place. For instance, inareas where we met respondents based on personal social networks, the respondentstended to differentiate themselves from those in the same community who abusedalcohol. Anecdotally then, it seems that many rural communities are divided bypatterns of alcohol use and abuse.

It is also worth mentioning that where difficulties were experienced in meetingrespondents of the required demographic, this may be partially attributable to theharshness of rural life in South Africa. Ideally, dialect research should be conducted

in an environment with low volumes of migration to and from the area, focussingon respondents who are older, linguistically conservativeand geographically im-mobile. The reality of rural South African life is very different. Farm economiesfrequently involve migrant labour, often from outside the region (e.g. some re-spondents mentioned that seTswana L2 Afrikaans was a different variety) and alsowithin the region (many of our respondents had traveled extensively within the re-gion in their lifetimes).

Moreover, development in South Africa and linguistic change are closely linked.Economic development often goes hand-in-hand with urbanization and concomi-tant rural depopulation. Urbanization is also fuelled by local dynamics of landownership and drought e.g. between 1994 and 2004, 2.3 million farm workershave been displaced and another 900 000 evicted, an increaseover the previousdecade (Nkuzi Development Association reporthttp://www.nkuzi.org.za/

docs/Evictions Summary.pdf (Accessed 16 March 2009)). This motivates lin-guistic change in two ways: first, rural varieties become less sustainable as urban-ization of the youth occurs; second, urban areas linguisticmelting pots that lead tofuture varieties.

It is also worth mentioning that where difficulties were experienced in meetingrespondents of the required demographic, this may be partially attributable to theharshness of rural life in South Africa. Ideally, dialect research should be conductedin an environment with low volumes of migration to and from the area, focussingon respondents who are older, linguistically conservativeand geographically im-mobile. The reality of rural South African life is very different. Farm economiesfrequently involve migrant labour, often from outside the region (e.g. some respon-dents mentioned that Tswana L2 Afrikaans was a different variety) and also withinthe region (many of our respondents had traveled extensively within the region intheir lifetimes).

Moreover, development in South Africa and linguistic change are closely linked.Economic development often goes hand-in-hand with urbanization and concomi-tant rural depopulation. Urbanization is also fuelled by local dynamics of landownership and drought e.g. between 1994 and 2004, 2.3 million farm workershave been displaced and another 900 000 evicted, an increaseover the previousdecade (Nkuzi Development Association reporthttp://www.nkuzi.org.za/

docs/Evictions Summary.pdf (Accessed 16 March 2009)). This motivates lin-guistic change in two ways: first, rural varieties become less sustainable as urban-ization of the youth occurs; second, urban areas linguisticmelting pots that lead tofuture varieties.

2.6 Validity issues

Another issue we faced was that many respondents were nominally aware of thestandard and were aware that they may not speak the standard.This is indicatedin the quotations below where respondents use overwording of lexical sets relatingto ideologies of linguistic purity:suiwer ‘pure’, reg praat ‘correct speaking’,ver-beter‘improved’ and its oppositemors hom‘messing it up’,nie reg nie‘incorrect’,agterstevoor‘back-to-front’. In the following examples, all data are from the NorthEast Cape (Kakamas, Keimoes, Riemvasmaak).

(5) a. B: Ek weet dit is dans vanaand.I know it is dancing tonightA: Ja.YesC: dissuiwerAfrikaansThat’s pure Afrikaans

b. C: Dis nie wat ek op ’n skool gekry het nie. Dis hoekom onsnie regpraat nie omdat ons is nie geleer nie. Ons het net Standerd vyf.Darem praat onsagterstevoordis hoe ons die A die Afrikaanseintlik die se ook [ok] jymors homwant jy sal miskien nou vra ekse: wie wie is daai? Ek se: waantoe gaan julle? Ons praat so.Dishoe ons die Afrikaans praat.It’s not what I got at school. That’s why we don’t speak correctly –because we were never taught. We only have grade seven. So wespeak back-to-front – that’s how we actually speak. They also say‘you’re messing it up’ because you might now ask: ‘who is that?’ Isay: ‘where’re you going?’ We speak like that. That is how wespeak Afrikaans.

c. C: Dis nie reg nie maar maar maar ons praat so.It’s not right, but, but, but we speak like that.

d. A: Maar die feit dat jy nou vir so lank in die Kaap was dink jy joutaal het bietjie verander praat jy soos die Kaap se mense beginpraat?But the fact that you’ve spent so much time in the Cape; do youthink you’ve changed your language a bit so that you have begun tosound like people in the Cape?C: Nee ek het nooit soos ’n Kapenaar gepraat nie maar myAfrikaans het hetverbetermaar ek sal nooit daar loop en daaigoeters se ek sal nooit.No, I’ve never spoken like a Capey (i.e. a person from the Capepeninsula) but my Afrikaans improved. but I will never go andspeak those things. I will never.A: Nie soos hulle praat nie.Not like they speak.

C: Nee nee nee uhuh (negative)No, no no uhuhA: Jy praat so jy dink nog altydYou think you’ve always spoken like thisC: Nee ek praat ek praat nog altyd soos die wereldNo, I speak, I speak always like the world

On the other hand, anecdotally, it seems that what the respondents considered ‘sui-wer’ Afrikaans (the term used by the respondent) could differ substantially fromwhat is considered ‘standard’ (5a) e.g. as reified in the media and defined in pre-scriptive language guides. Many respondents were aware andproud of regionaldifferences in their language (5b,c,d) and are quite adamant that they have not beeninfluenced by external varieties or the standard (5d). In doing this, they often dis-played considerable pride in the regional variety as illustrated by the followingextract.

(6) C: het ons gehoor jy moet hom reg praat want my kinders kan (())’Oumamoenie so praat nie’. Ek se los my so lank jy verstaan wat ek sˆe.B: Ja.C: Los moenie nou moenie vir my kom verander nie want uh net solankjy kan nou verstaan wat ek se.

3 A quantitative assessment of reliability

Reliability is, of course, a central concern, especially ifthere is the risk of slightlynoisy data (e.g. as a result of the use of interlects or the respondent accommodat-ing to the standard). The key question is how to determine that the questionnairemethod is reliable, notwithstanding the endorsements of other projects using sim-ilar methods (Cornips and Poletto 2005, Cornips and Jongenburger 2001, Cornips2006, Cornips and Corrigan 2005, Barbiers et al. 2007).

Assuming that noise is systematic, there are three parts to the argument: (i) Com-pare the responses to stimuli with what expected based on existing literature andother sources: i. Known attested constructions which informants judge as attested;ii. Known unattested constructions which informants judgeas unattested; iii. Con-structions which are known to be unattested in the Standard language but knownto be attested in dialects and which are judged by informantsto be attested in theirdialects. (ii) Look at disconfirming evidence in a particular section and check to seewhether the results are internally systematic and consistent.

Section 3.1 explores (i) while section 3.2 looks at (ii).3

3.1 Comparison with what is expected

One way of ascertaining the general reliability of the questionnaire is to comparethe responses to various control stimuli against the actualresponses from the par-ticipants. The respondents responded reliably to these stimuli in the anticipatedway. In the following examples, n=19 and the percentage reflects the number ofrespondents who indicated judgements as expected; in otherwords, this indicatesthe percentage of reliable answers. Note that this only indicates the clear ‘yes’ and‘no’ percentages. For some examples, respondents either expressed uncertainty orgave responses that could not be reliably interpreted as either ‘yes’ or ‘no’; thesenumbers are typically very low in the examples below and are included as part ofthe ‘noise’.

(7) Examples which are attested in standard Afrikaans and were identified asattested by the respondents

a. 18b

EkI

weetknow

datthat

hyhe

diethe

boekbook

leesread

‘I know that he is reading the book’ (19/19;100%)b. 19b

EkI

weetknow

datthat

hyhe

diethe

boekbook

geleesPST-read

hethave.AUX

‘I know that he read the book’ (1/19;94.7%)c. 20c

EkI

wonderwonder

ofif

hyhe

diethe

boekbook

geleesPST-read

hethave.AUX

‘I wonder if he has read the book’ (19/19;100%)d. 21c

EkI

wonderwonder

watterwhich

boekbook

hyhe

geleesPST-read

hethave.AUX

‘I wonder which book he read’ (2/19;89.4%)e. 23b

EkI

weetknow

datthat

daarthere

geskinderPST-gossip

wordis.AUX

‘I know that there is gossiping (going on)’ (1/19;94.7%)f. 52a

Diethe

kinderschildren

weetknow

datthat

JanJan

diethe

huishouse

gebouPST-build

hethave.AUX

‘The children know that Jan built the house’ (19/19;100%)g. 52b

Diethe

kinderschildren

weetknow

datthat

JanJan

diethe

huishouse

laatgot.caus

boubuild

hethave.AUX

‘The children know that Jan got the house built’ (19/19;100%)

h. 53a

EkI

weetknow

datthat

JanJan

diethe

huishouse

helphelp

boubuild

hethave.AUX

‘I know that Jan helped build the house’ (19/19;100%)

There were many examples in the database where the respondents identified con-structions as occurring in their communities.4 It is interesting to note the very highdegree of agreement between speakers ranging from 100% to 89% (n=19)). Thisboth shows that the test is reliable (at least for these examples) and furthermore,provides an informal estimate of the amount of ‘noise’ in thesample. Based on thisI will take the noise level to be 6%-11%. Incidentally, this is consistent with the3% to 11% ‘non response’ for the same stimulus type established by Cornips andJongenburger (2001:57) – an encouraging sign.

The next set of data are examples which are unattested in standard Afrikaans andwhich were identified as being unattested in local varieties. Note that some of these(e.g. the first example), while attested in Dutch dialects, are certainly not expectedin Afrikaans ones. So these judgements confirm what is expected based on readingsof the literature. Again, it is worth noting the very high percentages which confirmthe informal noise level suggested above.

(8) Examples which are unattested in standard Afrikaans andwere identified asunattested by the respondents

a. 50b

*Diethe

kinderschildren

weetknow

datthat

hyhe

byby

myme

kuiervisit

hethave.AUX

komcome

‘The children know that he came to visit me’ (19/19;100%)b. 55a

*EkI

hethave.AUX

toethen

geopstaanPST-up-stand

‘Then I got up’ (1/19;94.7%)c. 55b

*FreddieFreddie

hethave.AUX

toethen

gewegloopPST-away-walk

‘Then Freddie walked away’ (1/19;94.7%)d. 47a

*EkI

hethave.AUX

diethe

paalpole

inin

diethe

grondground

staanstand

gemaakPST-make

‘I made the pole stand in the ground’ (19.19;100%)

The last question (8d/47a) is particularly interesting because it is indeed ungram-matical in standard Afrikaans, but was expected based on theliterature (Robbers1997). The respondents (in the North-West Cape province) identified the stimulusas 100% unattested. However, they then went on to provide thecorrect non-standard

version i.e.Ek het die paal (in die grond) gestamak‘I made the pole (in the ground)PST-stand-make’, which is equally unattested in standard Afrikaans, but is attestedin dialectal Afrikaans. In other words, the stimulus was effective in being able toelicit non-standard varieties. In addition, the examples in (8b) and (8c) with sep-arable prefixes are important because they can be contrastedwith examples withinseparable prefixes (see (9) below). Thus respondents wereable to distinguish be-tween attested non-standard forms (i.e. those below) and unattested non-standardforms (those above).

The next group of examples are unattested in standard Afrikaans but are identifiedas attested in local varieties. Examples such as these are attested in the dialect litera-ture (Calitz 1957, Rademeyer 1938, Heiberg 1950) and in somecolloquial varietiesof standard Afrikaans (Donaldson 1993). They are indicatedas being attested bythe respondents as would be expected. Once again, I would like to draw attentionto the very high and consistent percentages associated withthese. Once again, theyconfirm the noise level established previously.

(9) Examples which are unattested in standard Afrikaans butare identified asattested by the respondents (Calitz 1957, Rademeyer 1938, Heiberg 1950)

a. 56a

Hyhe

hethave.AUX

diethe

doeiedead

honddog

gebegrawePST-bury

‘He buried the dead dog’ (2/19;89.4%)b. 56c

EkI

hethave.AUX

nienot

jouyour.POSS

briefletter

geverstaanPST-understand

nienot

‘I didn’t understand your letter’ (2/19;89.4%)

The indirect grammaticality judgements are also stable with respect to minimalpairs. In other words, not only the grammatical ones are identified as attested, butthe ungrammatical ones are identified as being unattested.

(10) Minimal pairs: of attested and unattested values in standard Afrikaansa. 35a

JanJan

hethave.AUX

nato

syhis.POSS

huishouse

toeto

gegaanPST-go

‘Jan went to his house’ (17/19;89.4%)b. 35b

*JanJan

isis.AUX

nato

syhis.textscposs

huishouse

toeto

gegaanPST-go

‘Jan went to his house’ (2/19;10.5%)c. 35d

JanJan

hethave.AUX

nato

homhim

toeto

geloopPST-walk

‘Jan walked to him’ (16/19;84.2%)d. 35c

*JanJan

isis.AUX

nato

homhim

toeto

geloopPST-walk

‘Jan walked to him’ (2/19;10.5%)

These data indicate that for known variables (based either on the literature or onstandard Afrikaans), the respondents respond as predictedand that task effects seemto be relatively negligible.5

3.2 A case study of expletive use: exploring responses in thecontext of a particu-lar section

Having demonstrated that the questionnaire elicits the expected responses in par-ticular cases, I will now explore the responses from a particular section of the ques-tionnaire relating to expletive use. Not all the data display such categorical effectsas those indicated above. There are many stimuli which elicit percentages that fallbetween 11% and 89%. This raises a number of questions. First, are these ‘in-between’ results simply wrong? (i.e. a result of task effects, inconsistent methodol-ogy, respondent fatigue, respondent ‘confusion’, transcribing errors etc) If not, thenhow should they be interpreted?

One way of evaluating the implications for validity of non-categorical responses isto consider them in context with the other stimuli. For this reason, I will examinethe question set relating to Extended Projection Principle(EPP)/expletive effects. Iwill demonstrate that non-categorical responses exist in the same context as cate-gorical ones and that consequently, the non-categorical responses cannot be simplydismissed as being ‘noise’ or respondent error, respondentconfusion, or a failureof the reliability of the test.

To set the scene, Afrikaans, like Dutch, has an optional expletive in embedded po-sition. This is indicated by the contrast between (11a,b). It is known independentlythat both options are attested and the difference in the percentage scores refers to thepersonal preferences of the respondents. However, the overall high percentages of78.1% and 90.8% would seem to indicate that both are grammatical (as expected).

(11) Optionaldaar/there-type expletivea. 41a

EkI

weetknow

datthat

∅ vanaandtonight

byat

JanJan

gebraaiPST-barbecue

wordis.AUX

‘I know that there will be a barbecue at Jan’s house tonight’ (78.1%)b. 41b

EkI

weetknow

datthat

daarthere

vanaandtonight

byat

JanJan

gebraaiPST-barbecue

wordis.AUX

‘I know that there will be a barbecue at Jan’s house tonight’ (90.8%)c. 41c

EkI

weetknow

ditthat

vanaandit

bytonight

Janat

gebraaiJan

wordPST-barbecue is.AUX

‘I know that there will be a barbecue at Jan’s house tonight’ (82.6%)

However, in colloquial Afrikaans, there is also a 3SG.NEUT.expletive, namelydit. The percentage of 82% falls short of a categorical judgement (it exceeds the10% noise level established earlier) but is still a fair majority; they are far from the0-10% range for the examples known to be ungrammatical (see above).

It might be argued that the 3SG expletive in (11c) is actuallya true deictic pronounwhich interferes with the judgements of the respondents, leading to lower-than-expected percentages. Thus the reading for (12a) would be something along thelines of that something (e.g. meat) is braaied at Jan’s house. However, this is notappropriate for (12a) usingdanssince it is unlikely that there is a clear deicticreferent. In addition (12b) is incompatible with a deictic reading.

(12) Dit/it is not a deictic pronouna. 42d

OpOn

OujaarsaandNew Year’s Eve

wordis.AUX

ditit

gedans/gedrinkPST-dance/PST-drink

ooracross

diethe

helewhole

landland

‘On New Year’s Eve, there will be drinking/dancing across the wholeland’ (41.7%)

b. 43e

OpOn

diethe

plaasfarm

wordis.AUX

ditit

vandagtoday

gewerkPST-work

‘On the farm, there will be working (going on) today’ (60.8%)

The percentages here are beyond the range of unattested examples (which were inthe 0-10% range demonstrated earlier). The fact that these percentages exceed theinformal noise level shows that they are relevant in some way, although exactlywhich wayis a matter of interpretation.

In addition, thedaar/there-type expletive has a larger distribution than in standardAfrikaans or Dutch. This is most apparent in weather predicate contexts where adaar/there-type expletive unexpectedly appears in the responses of a slight majorityof respondents.

(13) Weather expletivesa. 45a

DitIt

reen(t)rain(-agr)

vanaandtonight

‘It’s raining tonight’ (96.45%)b. 45d

DaarThere

reen(t)rain(.AGR)

vanaandtonight

‘lit. There’s raining tonight’ (55.3%)

The there-type expletive is unexpected, nevertheless about half of all respondentsjudged it to be attested. This result is unlikely to be the result of methodologicalerror for a number of reasons. First, respondents did not reverse their judgements –even when questioned by the interviewer – and were even able to answer questionson the semantics of the construction i.e. whether thedaar expletive was locative innature or not (it always is).

(14) Thinus: Daar reen vanaand?There rains tonight

Alfred: Ja, daar reen vanaand. ’t bedoel nou bietjie eietjie[weg ’n afstand]Yes, there rains tonight. It means now a little way away – a distance

Alexa: [afstand, ja.]Distance, yes

Thinus: ’n afstand?a distance?

Alfred: Ja.Yes

Second, it is found in virtually every datapoint that has been visited, so it is ge-ographically widespread. This means it is not simply the product of a failure inmethodology at a specific data point. Second, it appears regardless of the identityof the interviewer so it cannot easily be attributed to the various interviewer effectsor the Rutledge effect (Bailey and Tillery 1999).6

The next argument that these judgements are not simply artifacts of the method etc,is that the non-categorical judgements co-occur with clear, categorical ones such ashyandsy in the same stimulus set (15).

(15) a. 45b

HyHe

reen(t)rain(.AGR)

vanaandtonight

‘It’s raining tonight’ (9.1%)b. 45c

SyShe

reen(t)rain(.AGR)

vanaandtonight

‘It’s raining tonight’ (3.6%)c. 45a

DitIt

reen(t)rain(.AGR)

vanaandtonight

‘It’s raining tonight’ (96.45%)d. 45d

DaarThere.LOC

reen(t)rain(.AGR)

vanaandtonight

‘It’s raining tonight over there’ (55.3%)

For this set of examples, the pragmatics and discourse context remain constant forall examples: all examples refer to a particular raining event located in space andtime (i.e. one cannot infer a pragmatic effect in one examplethat cannot be inferredin the others). Furthermore, they are cognitively comparable; in fact, it could beargued that the non-referential expletiveit is more cognitively difficult simply be-cause it does not refer to any particular entity. In addition, these options are notbeyond the realms of linguistic possibility:hy ‘he’ is apparently used as an exple-tive in the Western Cape in areas where ‘gender neutralization’ of pronouns hastaken place. Nevertheless it was not consistently attestedin our data area. Respon-dents were also very clear that the feminine 3SG pronoun was not used in thisway. These arguments strongly suggest that these elicited judgements (a) cannotbe explained away on methodological, cognitive or pragmatic grounds and (b) thataccordingly, they do reflect underlying linguistic judgements about the I-languagesof the speakers.

Another possible explanation is that the 3SG pronoun is a reduced pronoun andforms a suffix on the weather predicate itself. In other words, when the respondentssayDaar reen’t ‘There rains’, they actually meanDaar reen dit‘There rains it’.Such a response could easily be mistaken for adaar/there-type expletive – espe-cially as the respondents always emphasized the strongly locative character of thedaar ‘there’ in weather contexts.

(16) a. DaarThere.LOC

reenrain

ditit

‘It’s raining over there’ (Standard Afrikaans)

This may be plausible as an explanation of the origin of thedaar/there-type ex-pletive in this context, but it is inadequate as a synchronicexplanation because thesuffix ’t can be doubled by a true 3SG expletive. Thus the suffix is not pronominalin nature and this cannot be the explanation for the presenceof daar.

(17) a. DitIt

reentrain(.AGR)

‘It’s raining’ (Colloquial Afrikaans)b. *Dit

Itreenrain

ditit

‘lit. It’s raining it tonight’c. Hy

Hegatgo(.AGR)

reenrain

vanaandtonight

‘It’s going to rain tonight’ (Colloquial Afrikaans)d. *Hy

Hegaango

ditit

reenrain

vanaandtonight

‘lit. He’s going raining it tonight’

There is evidence that the expletivedaar ‘there’ in weather contexts is actually alocative adverb rather than an expletive per se. All speakers who accepted (15d)emphasized the locative reading of the expletive. Under this interpretation, thereare pragmatic effects: certain speakers accept the sentence with a locative reading,while others reject the non-locative reading. What cannot be excluded is that thelatter group actually accept the locative reading, in whichcase the percentage ofthose accepting (15d) is presumably much higher than 55.3%.Furthermore, it alsosuggests that there is a null expletive in weather verb contexts. This is not beyondthe realms of linguistic possibility since there is independent evidence that nullexpletives exist in Afrikaans (see example (11a)). However, if this hypothesis wasultimately proved correct, then it would constitute evidence against the possibilitythat the strange expletive effects discussed above are the result of methodologicalnoise.

The next argument that these non-categorical judgements cannot be simply dis-missed as ‘error’ or ‘noise’ is that they are relatively stable across a number ofdifferent syntactic contexts. This has already been demonstrated above where it hasbeen shown that adaar/there-type expletive occurs both in embedded contexts andin weather-verb contexts. In both these contexts, the percentages indicate a non-categorical judgement although the percentages themselves differ.

(18) Expletives in raising contextsa. 46a

DitIt

lyklook

ofif

diethe

weerweather

moretomorrow

mooinice

salwill

weesbe

‘It looks as if the weather will be nice tomorrow’ (96.4%)b. 46b

HyHe

lyklook

ofif

diethe

weerweather

moretomorrow

mooinice

salwill

weesbe

‘It looks as if the weather will be nice tomorrow’ (6%)c. 46d

itemShe

Sylook

lykif

ofthe

dieweather

weertomorrow

morenice

mooiwill

salbe

wees

‘It looks as if the weather will be nice tomorrow’ (6%)d. 46c

DaarThere

lyklook

ofif

diethe

weerweather

moretomorrow

mooinice

salwill

weesbe

‘It looks as if the weather will be nice tomorrow’ (32.5%)e. 43c

DaarThere

lyklook

ofif

daarthere

miskienperhaps

iemandsomebody

inin

diethe

tuingarden

sitsit

‘There looks as if there is perhaps somebody sitting in the garden’(42.8%)

In addition,daar/there-type expletives can occur in raising contexts and can evenbe doubled by a true locativedaar – thereby apparently increasing the degree ofacceptability.

(19) Daar/Theredoubles with a true locativea. 45e

DaarThere

opon

diethe

berge,mountains

reenrain

daarthere

vanaandtonight

‘There on the mountains it’s raining tonight’ (45.0%)

Thus, it appears that there are no simple ways of discountingnon-categorical re-sponses in terms of method. The results appear to reflect someproperty of thelanguage used by the respondents. Exactly how to interpret this, of course, is stillan open question.7

4 Summary, questions and implications

I conclude then, that there is little evidence to suggest that the non-categorical re-sults are ‘noise’ or ‘error’ or a result of respondent ‘fatigue’ or task effects etc. Theymust tell us something about the linguistic variety in question. How this is inter-preted is, of course, still an open question. I would like to suggest that they indicatedispreferred forms which are nevertheless attested, albeit in smaller numbers. Per-haps there are more subtle distinctions that further stimuli could disambiguate. Ul-timately, the non-categoricality really indicates that wehave found more variationthan we originally anticipated.

What is very clear from the results demonstrated in this paper is that the notion ofan linguistic ‘instrument’ must be problematized. For somelinguists there may bean implicit understanding that a linguistic ‘instrument’ is something like a ques-tionnaire which can be applied consistently and systematically across a range ofrespondents and contexts thereby yielding quantitative results. However, this viewignores the evaluative roles played by both the respondentsand field workers whichconstitute a major component of an interview situation and thus of the instrumentitself. The ‘instrument’ consists of the combination of both the questionnaire (a set

of stimuli) and the interviewer working in a particular context with a respondent.

For instance, at an early stage in the piloting of the questionnaire it was realizedthat for certain stimuli which mentioned drinking and dancing, respondents wouldoften react to the pragmatic context rather than to the stimulus per se. For example,in response to the stimulusDaar word gedans/gedrink op die plaas‘There is danc-ing/drinking on the farm’, older respondents would sometimes respond negativelysince to affirm the stimulus could presumably entail a value judgement (given thecontextual use and abuse of alcohol mentioned earlier in this paper). This requiredthe interviewer to intervene and rephrase the stimulus in a way that was pragmat-ically more acceptable. Another example of dynamic interpretation occurs when arespondent provides an answer that may be ambiguous and/or when it is unclearwhether a respondent would actually use the construction inquestion. When thisoccurs, it is the role of the interviewer to take action by rephrasing or repeatingthe question or by asking for qualifying information. The interviewer thus plays aninterpretive role in evaluating responses to the stimuli, assessing whether to repeatstimuli, rephrase them etc. In addition, the respondent herself also plays an inter-pretive role insofar as s/he must assess whether a particular kind of stimulus is usedin their language community, by whom and whether it is widelyattested or not.

This links to broader question of whether an instrument can ever be neutral orobjective and able to be applied without interpretive inputfrom the interviewer. Iwould argue that an objective instrument, in this sense, is an impossibility and thatthe interviewer is an important part of the instrument itself. Ultimately, the skillof the interviewer is an important component of the success or not of the inter-view. This is taken for granted in many types of descriptive,sociolinguistic andethnographic research and given its pervasiveness (indeedunavoidability) in thediscipline, I don’t see it as being particularly problematic so long as this is acknowl-edged.8 The implication of this is that due care must be taken when administeringa questionnaire of this nature, that it be applied in a contextually sensitive way bytrained linguists. As such, the questionnaire should be treated more as a set of stim-uli for discussion rather than a fixed set of questions that require binary answers.While it may be suggested that an ‘instrument’ contextuallydefined would provideinvalid and unreliable results, this paper demonstrates that this is not actually thecase and that such an instrument can provide interesting results.

Notes

1Also in Southern Namibia, Afrikaans is spoken by a sizeable majority. I will excludediscussion of Namibia here because (a) it falls beyond the scope of the current researchproject and (b) the Afrikaans speaking areas apparently form part of the same dialect groupas in the Northern Cape, namely Orange River Afrikaans.

2Note that since Afrikaans has no preterite past tense (past tense is expressed periphrasti-cally with an auxilliary), the examples in (1) are ambiguousbetween present perfect andpast perfect readings.

3Unfortunately, the numbers are generally too small to obtain reliable correlation statis-tics (e.g. Chi-square test) and although some correlationsdo exist, they cannot be shown tobe significant until more data are obtained. Thus (iii) is left for future research.

4In the following examples, the superscripted number is refers to the number of thestimulus in the questionnaire. It is not directly relevant to this talk.

5Fourie (1985) suggested that respondents were not able to parse syntactically com-plex stimuli. Our experience does not bear this out; the examples cited above reflect theability of respondents to produce reliable judgements in complex syntactic (word order,embedded clauses) as well as morphological (ge- placement on particle verbs, IPP, com-paratives, preposition marking) domains. This is not to saythat certain types of stimuli arenot unproblematic. For example, in our experience, the presence of various nominals withinvarious positions in a verbal cluster (i.e. ‘Verb Projection Raising’) proved difficult to elicitreliable responses as respondents did not appear to be able to hear the difference betweenthe various possibilities.

6The daar/there-type expletive in weather contexts first surfaced in a pilotinterviewin Paardekraal (EC) with myself as the interviewer. It was also elicited by two differentinterviewers and also by a third-year student who collecteddata for another project in theKnysna area in 2008.

7The kinds of variation evidenced here are not beyond the realms of theoretical possi-bility. For example, Parrot (2001) discusses use of ‘weak’ pronoun expletives in Englishand De Vos (2009 m.s) shows thatthere-type expletives can occur in English weather-constructions under certain circumstances. As such, one likely interpretation of the resultsis that there is a subset of speakers who speak a variety whichallows this type of construc-tion.

8In fact, this issue occurs in many disciplines, including the ‘hard’ sciences and indeed,is probably present in all research. Some examples are illustrative. (1) An ultrasound scan-ner can be a high precision instrument, providing measurement data that can be used todetermine the date of birth of a foetus, disease diagnostics(e.g. nuchal fold measurement)etc. However, anybody who has seen an ultrasound scan will know that there is a lot of‘noise’ and that the gray blobs and patches are only meaningful to a specialist. Further-more, the specialist interprets these and adjusts the angleand pressure of the probe etc inorder to achieve the best resolution. Although all these decisions are interpretive in char-acter, they are not perceived as detracting from the overallreliability of the instrument. (2)Similarly, a gas spectrometer is a high-precision instrument capable of detecting trace el-ements in a sample. However, it is not simply a matter of injecting a sample and waitingto see what comes out the other side (except in routine cases). There may be other ele-ments in the mix that can drown out the element being looked for (adsorption effects). Aspecialist will know that detection of certain elements canbe improved by derivativization(using catalysts, filters and supressants etc). Once again,the instrument can be used to its

maximum efficiency only by a skilled, interpretive operator. Readers are also referred tothe discussions of the interpretive role of Gallileo and hiscritics in their observations ofsupposedly ‘objective’ facts about the heavens (Feyerabend 1993, Kuhn 1970).

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